Slaughtergarde
The story of Slaughtergarde begins almost a thousand years ago, when a sorcerous demon prince named Mu-Tahn Laa set his sights on the millions of souls on the Material Plane. As he gathered demon hordes and depraved mortals to his layer of the Abyss, a place known as the Mountains of Sorrow Beyond Measure, he began plotting.
Mu-Tahn Laa quickly reached an impasse. The energy required to sustain a gate to the Material Plane large enough to march an army through was incalculable. Even if he could accumulate enough power to create such a gate, the forces of good could quickly thwart his invasion by attacking the gate on the Material Plane, where defending it would be difficult. Mu-Tahn Laa’s frustration was so great that even the screams of the innocent provided no succor. He brooded on his black throne, contemplating other means to reach the Material Plane.
In a flash of inspiration, Mu-Tahn Laa conceived a fiendish plan. He cast off his despondency and started a series of eldritch trials, using his rival’s minions (and sometimes his rivals themselves) as experiments.
After decades of research, Mu-Tahn Laa’s efforts bore fruit. If his cults could provide enough energy in the form of souls who were honored and then sacrificed, Mu-Tahn Laa could actually transpose part of the Abyss and an area of the Material Plane known as Vaasa. Several square miles of the Mountains of Sorrow Beyond Measure could become part of Vaasa. The corresponding territory in Vaasa would be part of the Abyss forever.
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The transposition would be a one-way trip, so Mu-Tahn Laa began to create a mighty Fortress, packing it with his armies and enough supplies for an extended campaign in Vaasa. Mindful of the risk of failure, the demon prince thought it prudent to build some smaller gates connecting the fortress to the Abyss. He couldn’t retreat an army back through those gates, but he and his personal retinue should be able to travel between the two planes unimpeded.
After years of toil, Mu-Tahn Laa’s fortress, which he named Slaughtergarde, was ready. Mortal cults, responding to whispered promises of dark power, began gathering in a remote mountain valley. Demons were coming to Vaasa, and they were coming to stay.
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When Mu-Tahn Laa transposed Slaughtergarde to Vaasa, he found an army of mortals, modrons, and angels waiting eagerly to cast his invading force back to the Abyss. At first, the prospect of battle delighted the demon prince, and he ordered his armies forward into battle. It is said that the very sky shook that day, and the Beaumaris River ran dark with mortal blood, celestial essence, and demonic ichor.
As the sun set on the first day of the Battle of Slaughtergarde, Mu-Tahn Laa noticed a faint pull on the eldritch weavings responsible for Slaughtergarde’s transposition. Black obelisks that dotted Vaasa were siphoning away the power of the demon prince’s magic, threatening to throw his entire fortress back to the Abyss. Mu-Tahn Laa ordered his soldiers to destroy the obelisks quickly, lest his invasion end in disaster.
But Mu-Tahn Laa’s host was mad with bloodlust, and the chaotic warriors scorned his orders. As the obelisks siphoned more of its power away, Slaughtergarde began to break apart. At first, it crumbled around the edges, but as the forces of good redoubled their efforts, the entire fortress began to quake as if about to erupt. Before sunrise, in an upheaval loud enough to be heard across a continent, Slaughtergarde exploded. The majority of its wreckage hurtled across the void between the planes to its proper place in the Abyss.
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In order to transpose Vaasa, Mu-Tahn Laa created an entirely new fortress called Slaughtergarde using some pieces of the Impossible Fortress as needed. Incomplete notes from the scrolls speak of many sections of the new fortress, including an armory section, the Paths of Corruption (which seems to be some type of temple or shrine), and the Lesser Laboratory. Barracks, mustering halls, and fortifications seemed to abound in Slaughtergarde, but descriptions of these are cursory at best. It's possible that they didn't weigh much in the demon lord's mind.
One particular piece of Slaughtergarde, mentioned time and again is the fortress-tower of Threshold. It seems that Threshold was the focus point for the Transposition. It came through first and brought the rest of Slaughtergarde along with it. Piecing together the varying accounts - it is our belief that Threshold was, and is, the site where Castle Perilous stood, and it is very likely that the dungeons that still exist under Castle Perilous may include pieces of Slaughtergarde.
Mu-Tahn Laa's seat of power was a vast natural cavern which housed his throne room and an entire city, known as Iz. There he ruled the Impossible Fortress under the Mountains of Sorrow and Madness. Here the scrolls describe some members of his court. His seneschal was a powerful and unique pit fiend known as The Storm King, Khorramzadeh, and the general of his armies was the unique marilith knowns as Ylleshka, who, according to the descriptions, had two entwined bodies and heads with one tail. Each body with the expected six arms of a marilith.
He was served by a unique demon known as Deskari, Lord of the Locust Hosts. From the accounts, we have determined that Deskari was a nascent demon lord who ruled the skies above the Mountains of Sorrow. Some of the scrolls show Mu-Tahn Laa's distrust of Deskari and various plots of Deskari's to claim part of Mu-Tahn Laa's domain for himself. Deskari himself may have some connection to the Demon Prince Pazuzu and may have been a plant for the more powerful demon prince to keep track of an up-and-coming rival. It seems that aside from normal demonic backstabbing, Deskari was dutiful in fulfilling Mu-Tahn Laa's demands.
Mu-Tahn Laa apparently dealt with other demon lords as well, and negotiations with Bahamut and Orcus are mentioned specifically in the scrolls. It is possible that these two more-powerful demon lords sought to use the Corrupter in their own plans, or possibly that the Corrupter was playing all three of the greater demon lords against one another.
There are a few more hints at things in the scrolls. A powerful demonic assassin/infiltrator named Mingho; a weapon, possibly artifact level, known as the Demonblade. Something known as Black Ice Well, possible a site or location of importance, maybe a vault of some type from the bits we were able to salvage. The Black Vault, The Crimson Isle, the Ebon Fane. We know nothing of these beyond names.
Type
Fortress
Owner
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